Soul Stealers Read online

  "No," hissed Kell, back in the present, and he was young and strong and immortal once again, and he twisted fast, a blur, a subtle shift and Tashmaniok's sword scored a bright fire line down his cheek and struck the floor with a grinding squeal and Kell reached almost leisurely beneath his arm, drawing out his slightly curved blade, his Svian, and he thrust it up into Tashmaniok's groin and she gasped, and went rigid, and he held her there impaled on his knife and slowly crawled from beneath her straddle, so that his bearded face came level with hers. Her sword slashed at him, but he batted it aside and jerked the Svian knife, and Tash gasped again, for eight inches of steel were deep inside her flesh, deep inside her womb and holding her tight to Kell in an embrace. Her fangs gleamed. Kell smiled. "I was born in the Days of Blood," he hissed, and stood, and Tash rose with him for she had no option, and her vachine blood-oil ran down her legs and Kell's free hand grasped her throat and squeezed and her face, beautiful and pale and with eyes wide, crimson wide and fixed on Kell with a mixture of hate and admiration, they narrowed and Kell lifted her above his head, suspended by blade and throat, and her sword clattered to the ground, and her blood pattered like falling rain and with a scream Kell hurled the vachine across the chamber and she bounced from the wall, fell and landed like a cat, on all fours, then in a blur she was gone into the darkness; through the wall with a crash of buckling timber, and away into the night.

  Kell staggered, then righted himself, and took several deep rushing breaths. He moved to Ilanna, aware she had saved him again and it felt bitter in the back of his mind; like an old betrayal.

  He took up the great axe, and moved to Tashmaniok's spilled blood. She was a strong one, he realised. One of the strongest he had ever faced. And yet there was something else there; something more subtle. An element of the ancient.

  "Saark," Kell breathed, suddenly realising his danger, and he rushed to the broken boards where Tash had made her exit, out into the snow. What greeted Kell's vision was a confused tableau, a scene from a tapestry of nightmare. Fire roared through the town. Men charged with swords. People ran, screaming. Everything seemed a sudden chaos. Kell's eyes narrowed. These were no albino warriors, no Army of Iron; these were Blacklippers, the amoral – no, the immoral criminals who once kept the trade of Karakan Red flowing into the vachine empire in Silva Valley. This, Kell knew. But why attack this village? Why now?

  Starvation, realised Kell. The Army of Iron had invaded. Power politics had shifted. The Blacklippers could no longer ply the same trade; and they were criminals at heart, the diseased, the outcast, the toxic. Would they sit back and wait for a new harvest? Or would they flood from the Black Pike Mountains in their hundreds and take what they could?

  Fire roared. Sparks glimmered in snow-heavy skies. Chaos roamed the streets. Violence stalked, screaming, on legs of iron, and arrows whistled through the gloom, punching villagers from their feet, hands clawing at fletches.

  Kell squeezed from the hole, and ignoring Tashmaniok's footprints in the snow leading away, out into the forests, out into the wilderness where, within a short distance the blood droplets from her punctured wounded body ceased… instead, Kell moved forward into the chaos of the village, face grim, fire shining in his eyes, and with the Days of Blood reverberating in his soul like… a blood echo.

  Saark screamed like a girl as Shanna's fangs descended for his throat, and he kicked and struggled and punched at her face but she held him in an impossible grip, a vice of steel, and a terrible vulnerability flooded Saark and he went suddenly limp, submissive, accepting his fate.

  Fangs touched his neck. They were impossibly cold. Like ice.

  "No," he whispered.

  "Yes," she said, and her breath tickled his flesh.

  Subliminally, he heard the door open. Kell! he thought, in a sudden triumph, with a desperate surge of energy which rushed his system like an emetic. His eyes flickered open, and Shanna's fangs sank deep, through skin, through muscle, and Saark screamed and started to struggle once more, a fish on a hook, unwilling to give up and die and a voice, a cool cold young voice spoke.

  "Put him down," said Skanda, in little more than a whisper.

  With a snarl, Shanna hurled Saark across the room and dropped to a crouch, blood on her fangs, on her chin, on her talons, and her eyes were narrowed and she hissed, "You!"

  Saark hit the wall, hit the floor in a heap, moaning. His fingers came to his throat, saw his blood, and he whimpered. Outside, there came a roar, and a whoosh of flames. Armed men charged down the streets, and the sounds of battle swept through Creggan. Saark was confused, his mind swirling. Something pulsed in his neck like a second heartbeat. He imagined he heard a tiny tick tock, tick tock, like the smallest of mechanical engines. He shivered in premonition.

  Skanda moved into a half-crouch, and he circled Shanna, the vachine snarling at him, Saark's blood on her teeth. She licked it, delicately, until it was gone. "You should have died a long time ago," hissed Shanna.

  "We are back," said Skanda, the young boy looking out of place, sounding out of place, as the sudden battle raged outside the tavern and people screamed in the street below. Metal clashed on metal. More fire snarled through lantern-oil soaked thatch.

  "You will die again," pointed Shanna, her claw bloodied, her face more feral than human, now.

  "Whatever you say, Soul Stealer, daughter of Graal," smiled Skanda with full understanding. And he clapped, and with the clap came a sound like thunder, and from beneath the floorboards flooded a surge of insects, of beetles and lice, of worms and maggots and weevils, and they spread across the floorboards as the window was suddenly battered by flies and wasps, by crawling things and flying things and spiders and hornets and the room was suddenly alive as cockroaches swept the floor and walls like a tide erupting from the dark places of the filthy town, and this surge of insects swept around Skanda's feet, swirling like a fluid, a fluid of carapace shells and wings and claws and legs and fangs and Skanda pointed at Shanna whose face was drawn in horror, in revulsion, and the tide of insects flowed to her and up her legs and she turned and screamed and leapt for the window, crashing through glass which splintered and drove into her flesh in long jagged shards, and the insects stung her and bit her and she fell, landing heavily, glass daggers driving deep into her body so that blood gurgled at her mouth and she groaned, and yet still she stood, and ran, dodging through the battling influx of Blacklippers who fought a cruel battle with villagers in the streets.

  Skanda moved to the broken window, and tasted her blood, wiping a smear down his tongue. Then, as the sudden calling of insects began to dissipate, crawling into walls and back under floors and squeezing above rafters, heading back for the shadows and the damp places, places of rotting food and rotting flesh, so Skanda moved to Saark and helped the man to his feet. Skanda touched his fingers to Saark's throat, where twin puncture marks glowed like molten metal.

  Their eyes met.

  "You have a long life ahead of you," said Skanda, voice sour.

  "I understand," said Saark.

  "I do not think that you do."

  "I am still human," said Saark, fear in his eyes, in his voice, as if by voicing the fact he could somehow make it real. He touched his neck again, self-consciously.

  Skanda nodded, features dark and hooded. "For a little while, at least," he said.

  "What will happen to me?"

  "It will take time. It was not finished. You will see."

  "You are age-old enemies? The Ankarok, and the vachine?"

  "Yes. But we are coming back, Saark. We have been called. And there is nothing they can do."

  "You can help us!" hissed Saark, suddenly. "Help us drive the albinos back, beyond the Pikes!"

  "We have something more radical in mind," said Skanda, and then the small boy whirled about, and was gone, and Saark was confused but through his confusion he knew one thing was certain: this was a parting of the ways, as if Saark and Kell had brought him far enough, and now Skanda was strong enough to travel
and fight alone, and Saark was reeling, and vomiting, kneeling there amidst broken shards of glass and the crushed shells of a hundred insects, vomiting onto the floor of the room.

  Finally, he gained his feet, and found his rapier, and sheathed it on the third attempt. He staggered to the jagged window. Outside, chaos rampaged through the streets. The Blacklippers, the vagabonds from the Black Pike Mountains, were on a raid. Fire savaged the town. Saark smiled a very bitter smile; the villagers had done everything to evade the searching eyes of the Army of Iron – and in so doing, had left themselves open for a closer, just as evil, threat.

  As Saark watched, he saw a great figure striding down the street. He had a full beard and wore a bearskin jerkin which made him look even larger than his natural size, which was huge enough to begin. Saark saw two Blacklippers charge Kell, swords out, glittering, and Saark wanted to shout "Watch out!" but the words stuck in his throat like vomit and Kell turned at the last moment and his eyes were dark death and his axe swept up, cutting one man from groin to sternum in a spray of entrails and half-digested slurry, and bone shards glimmered white in the glow of the burning houses, then the axe twisted and cut sideways and a Blacklipper's head rolled, black dead lips tasting frozen mud. But then Saark fell to his knees, neck pulsing, blood pulsing, his veins burning from the inside out, and on a blanket of glass and crushed insects, he passed into a realm of blissful unconsciousness.

  Saark coughed, and floated in honey, and the world was perfect and he was perfect. He sat up. His vision swam. And then the world seemed – so clear. He stood, crunching glass, and pain jabbed him in the neck and he remembered the bite but even as he remembered it, so it started to fade, as if the memory was a drift of smoke. He had heard stories of the savage marshes to the east of Falanor, where tiny blood-sucking creatures swam the waters. They attached themselves to a man, or to a stricken donkey or cow, and injected a local anaesthetic before beginning a long, hard feast, gorging on the creature's blood. The man, or animal, unaware of anything amiss, was bled dry by the blood-suckers; if three or four attached, then weakness, porphyria, vertigo and death would occur. What struck Saark now now was that he felt as if a blood-sucking little bastard had attached to him; but he did not realise it. And even as the thought entered his mind, so it became clouded, and vanished, and he could see Kell outside and he checked his rapier and ran to the stairs and out through the deserted tavern.

  "Where's Skanda?" snarled Kell, upon seeing Saark.

  "I'm very well, thank you," snapped Saark, eyes flashing with anger.

  "Where's the boy?"

  "He's gone," said Saark, suddenly weary. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Around him, fire roared and Kell grimaced at three Blacklippers, who saw his gorestained axe and thought better of attack. "I was – ambushed, by a vachine. Skanda helped me, cast some weird ancient magick shit, and all these insects came from nowhere. I got a feeling he no longer needed us. He left."

  Kell nodded. "We need our horses."

  "And the donkey," said Saark.

  Kell gave him a sour, twisted look. "And the donkey," he said.

  In the shadows of a church tower, Jageraw watched it all. As snow fell, he'd seen the fat old warrior with the terrifying axe which spoke to him, which knew him, and he watched the slick dandy and the two death-cold Soul Stealers… oh how he knew them, knew them from Graal, Graal the bad man the wicked man!

  Jageraw rubbed his chest, rubbed the burning there, and it was getting more urgent and it would never stop until he reached his destination. But that was a long way a terrible way, no pretty there, no pretty at all!

  For hours he watched the Blacklipper raiders finishing up, and only when the cold dawn arrived and the town was deserted except for corpses did Jageraw climb steadily from the old church tower. He crept through the streets with his bag, pulling free a heart here, a kidney there, a spleen here, and some tasty precious lungs there.

  Then, with his sack full of organs, full to the brim with squelching delights, he slung it over his shoulder and headed for the forests and trails no longer used by man.

  It was hours later, and it was dark, and cold. Kell and Saark had rode hard for what seemed an eternity, until the blazing cottages and the vachine killers and the danger seemed, at least for now, far behind. It was Kell who finally pulled rein, and they sat on a low wooded hilltop, the distant fires obscured by snowfall and the haze of a welcome distance. Finally, Saark said, "How are you, Kell, old boy?" There was no mockery in his voice. Only concern.

  "I have felt better. Much better."

  "Back at that town, one came after you? A vachine, I mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Me also. She… scraped out my emotions like offal from a sack, and left them glistening on the road like so many spilled entrails. I feel unclean, Kell. I feel like she polluted my soul."

  Kell turned to Saark. "They were sent by Graal, and the bastard wants us dead. Or he wants… something. Something else, although I cannot figure what." He lowered his head, and for long moments looked like nothing but a weary old man. He rubbed at his eyes, his cheeks, his beard. He sighed, and in so sighing gave in to decades of weariness, to decades of a hard life, and a harder fight.

  "Are you injured?" said Saark, at last.

  "Only my ego, lad. She was fast, by all the gods." He grinned then. "But if I am to be slain, then let it be by one so beautiful! She was stunning beyond belief!"

  "Mine also. She hooked me like a fish. I fear I am becoming predictable." He sighed, and touched unconsciously at the collar of his cloak, beneath which lay the indelible fang-marks. He could feel them, burning. "Once, even such a beauty would have made me snarl and pucker, and flirt and push away; make her work for the privilege, you understand? Now, I fear, I am a slave to my trade."

  "And what trade's that, boy?"

  Saark smiled, and rubbed again at his neck. "The trade of dishonesty," he said.

  They made a rough camp before nightfall, deep in the woods, and Kell risked a fire. With little food between them they ate sparsely, but took comfort in the flames.

  Kell fell into a brooding silence, and winced occasionally. Saark realised it was the poison in his veins, in his organs, in his bones, and he made no comment; instead, he fell into his own weird and deviated brooding.

  As Kell fell asleep, watching the fire, so Saark took a little time to move away from the camp seeking solitude. His side was still incredibly sore where Myriam had stabbed him, a bitter event which still filled his mind with dark fury and images of an almost sexual revenge. His fingers traced across the dried blood mask which caked his skin. He winced, and pulled up his shirt. His fingers traced the contours of the wound and he jumped, eyes growing wide, then narrowing. The wound had healed. Completely. There was not even the ridge of a fresh scar.

  Saark fumbled in the darkness for a while, trying to see the wound, but he could not. And fear touched him, then. Shanna had bitten him. His fingers came up to his neck, and he realised these two wounds, also, had gone. What had she done top him? What strange vachine magick had she poured into his veins?

  Saark returned to the camp, and wrapped himself in a fur-lined cloak, and watched the fire and tried to sleep, but he was infused with a strange bubbling energy and sleep would not come. So, instead he watched Kell snoring by the fire, and wondered what powered the man: blood and gristle, like the rest of humanity? He smiled grimly. Or maybe Kell, too, was an esoteric meshing of flesh and clockwork?

  Kell dreamed of Nienna. She was seated beneath the arch of the Cailleach Fortress. Strange rocks littered the ground. The Black Pike Mountains grumbled in the background, like an angry father. "I am sorry," said Kell, walking towards her, both hands outstretched, but she opened her eyes and they were blood red, and she opened her mouth and it was a vachine abomination, and her fangs crunched free and she hissed the bestial hiss of the vampire… and leapt for him, and he batted her aside, watched her roll in the dirt and dust, cracking her head against a rock. Blood flowed, but instant
ly healed, blood rolling backwards up her flesh as skin and bone melded, hot wax running together. "What are you?" he screamed at his granddaughter, "What the hell are you?" and she leapt again, long claws stretching to tear free his throat…